Three Times the Charm
by Forelle
Summary: Three times Bo and Dyson meet one another over time. As ageless beings they will weather the storm.


He hasn't lived in the city for the past seven decades. Sure, he's stopped by a couple of times, but to see those two together for too long started to grate on him after the first year. She is his mate, it hadn't been a conscious choice, but the facts are there and she was willingly choosing to be with another. So shoot him that he was upset, it was in his rights.

He's kept up with them through the years. Hale hadn't held him to any obligations except that he'd bring any intel that sounded noteworthy to the Ash when he stopped for a night in the city. He was in town when Lauren gave birth to their daughter, Charlotte. All human. It was the way of things after all. He left that night, as soon as the pushing was done with. The girl looked like Bo.

The first time they actually saw one another and ended up talking to one another was at Kenzi's wedding. The groom was some human, not too important, but nice and loving. Or so Hale swore. He'd done a thorough check-up on the kid and the kid panned out. He kept quiet about the looks Hale and Kenzi kept shooting at one another, but he's never forgotten those looks between the two either. Bo was there with Charlotte and Lauren. She looked beautiful. And she laughed when he and she ended up dancing together. It rang in his ears just like before. Until Lauren stepped in between them. He almost couldn't forgive her. _She is my mate. You are merely borrowing her._ But he took several deep breaths, tilted his lips, and bowed out of the dance. Kenzi stopped looking at Hale after that and instead watched him the whole night with tears trying to pop out of her eyes. Before he left he hugged her until her bones couldn't take it anymore. She is the brightest human he's ever met.

The second time they talk to each other is at Lauren's funeral; twenty years later give or take. Kenzi is the only one who's truly changed at all. She's gray-haired now, no wig for this occasion. She looks drawn; with lines beginning to form on her skin that will later become creases in a wrinkled face. Her body is now pulled down by a weight he has not yet felt on his shoulders. But her eyes shine like the ocean under the sun, a brilliant blue that is almost lost within itself. She sits beside Bo with her arm wrapped around her best friend's shoulders. Hale sits on his mate's other side, his arm around her waist. Trick stands beside her as well, knowing such a grief and all of its dregs. For himself, he settles into a corner and waits for the room to clear. He knows he should offer her his condolences, but he almost feels the need to . . . apologize. Instead, he walks up to the casket where the doctor's body lies and thanks her for keeping Bo happy, he also tells her that he will take his turn with Bo now. She seeks him out after Lauren is buried in the ground and sobs into his shoulder. Charlotte looks on with something in her eyes he cannot pin-point. Bo grieved for a decade.

He makes runs through the city far more often in the decade after Lauren's death than any time before. He does not speak more frequently with Bo, but he integrates himself into the lives of Kenzi and her children and he smiles every time Hale visits Kenzi's home and greets him the next day at her table in the same clothes as the day before. Kenzi's husband died a few months after Lauren. A car accident. Kenzi dies because of a robbery gone bad. It was at a convenience store. Whoever killed her died messily and slowly. He doesn't see Bo for the next twenty-five years.

Bo returns for Charlotte's funeral after spending a few years abroad. It's the one time Dyson leaves the city that the funeral is arranged. He'd left to live in the wilderness for a while. Things were not the same after Kenzi died. Hale was more distant and he didn't expect himself to get out of his own depression for a good long while.

It's merely by chance that their third true connection occurs. They're both in Seattle. He's squatting after having hunted as a wolf for the past six months. She's ambling about after drinking and having sex and doesn't know which way is up and which way is down. He only stops her because he's on high alert and he wants something familiar from before he fell into the woods. They crash together that night. Hardly any words are spoken between the two of them, but they pour themselves into one another and fall asleep exhausted and used and sated. They wake confused and wonderful and tired. He doesn't want to say that it's been thirty-five years since Lauren's death, that it's been over half a century since he last held her in his arms and that this might be the best he's felt in a long time. He doesn't want to hear about her life with Lauren as much as his questions burn him. He doesn't want to hear about what she's been doing and he doesn't want to have to tell her what he's been up to over the past seventy years. He just wants to be. With her. And as much as it kills him to do this to her, he wants her for his own for as long as they both shall live. He wants her until the end of time. He wants her.

And so they try to fix themselves. They try to be all they need.

And they live.


End file.
